Sir David Attenborough, the face of the BBC's landmark natural history programming, has said the corporation's "sails need to be trimmed" and that it has "strayed from the straight and narrow".

Attenborough, presenter of major BBC natural history series including Life and Planet Earth, added that the corporation was "crucially important" to society, but it "needs to be refocused".

In an interview for this week's edition of the New Statesman, the former BBC channel director also warned that the broadcaster would be "gone in a decade" if it was stripped off its licence fee funding.

"I think the BBC has strayed from the straight and narrow on a number of courses at the moment. The sails need to be trimmed and [it] needs to be refocused," Attenborough said.

"But it is crucially important in our society and [represents] the highest aspirations of our society. I'm appalled anybody thinks otherwise."

In an apparent warning to the government, which in October negotiated a hasty licence fee settlement that will see the BBC's income cut by 16% in real terms, Attenborough said: "If you remove the licence fee, [the BBC] would be gone in a decade, finished."

Attenborough has spent more than 50 years at the BBC, and is credited with bringing colour television to BBC2 in 1967 while he was channel controller. In 1969, he became director of programming across BBC television, before leaving four years later to take up programme making again.

"It was very nice for me running a network for a few years, in the sense that it was very flattering for one's ego. But it's not much fun," he told the New Statesman.

Asked what he would be doing if he were back behind a desk at the corporation, Attenborough jested: "Resigning, I think."

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